Language teaching

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Grand designs

January 17, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just spoken to my parents who were cheesed off, as Mum put it. Just as the builders were about to get stuck in, they got an in-passing estimate of $800,000 for the job. One zero too many, I suggested. But no, they were expecting it to be $500,000. Sweet jeebus. Now they’ll have to start all over again, taking care not to besmirch these builders’ good reputation throughout Geraldine, and coming up with excuses for the many occasions when nosy (and, let’s face it, competitive) “friends” ask them what’s happening with their house. I was sympathetic to the extent that it was affecting their mood, but (and this might sound rude) their ambitious project itself is neither here nor there to me. Tomorrow they have to make a trip to Wanaka to pick up a painting.

Outside my lessons, and thank heavens for them, life has been a struggle. Yesterday I had my cerebral MRI scan. First I had to go to another clinic for a test to confirm that the contrasting dye wouldn’t wreck me. An allergy test, right? No, we don’t do allergy tests for that. We do something else. Ugh, this is getting complicated. Beyond me. Outside the Nokia office block next to the clinic, I tried calling the MRI place but momentarily forgot that my credit had expired because I’d had problems with the BT Pay app the night before and wasn’t able to top it up. I visited the nearest branch of Orange in the centre of town and got my credit restored, then went back home, took photos of the six water meters and sent them to the administrator of this block who requests them once a month, and called the MRI people who confirmed that the something else was what I needed. I returned to the clinic and got the something else which was just a blood test. The nurse asked if I’d ever had a blood test before because of the way I must have been acting. I felt a mess. I went home for a second time, planned and printed out some material for my lessons, then left for my scan.

The MRI place was just over the border into Giroc. I rode to the stadium and another 2.5 km down Calea Martirilor 1989 which turns into Calea Timișoarei at the boundary. When I arrived I told them my weight, ensured them I had nothing metal inside me, and filled in a bunch of forms. I had to tick “Da” about two dozen times in what looked like a kind of waiver. They chuckled at my distinctly non-Romanian name and email address, but were good-natured. They hadn’t had the confirmation of my blood test, but proceeded with the scan anyway. I stripped almost naked and lay on the bed, my head clamped. I wore headphones and the woman placed a squeeze ball in my left hand; she said she’d stop the scan if I squeezed it. Was it a good thing that I had that option or a bad thing that I might need it? She said it would take twenty minutes so I counted the seconds. The initial screeching noises were like dial-up internet, then they changed to a “duvduvduv”, then a “baapbaapbaap”. The sounds were off-putting at first, but I got used to them. I was still going when I reached 1200; the time was only an estimate, and the noises had a rhythm which made it hard to count seconds with much accuracy. I was in the 1350s when I saw the light of day again. The lady told me that my test results had come through OK so I went back “under” for the contrasting agent to be applied – an injection to my hand, then a few more minutes of “duvduvduv”. It was all over. I got dressed, parted with 930 lei (NZ$320 or £170), then left. I should get the results by the end of the week.

The next hour or so was the best part of the day. I had plenty of time before my lesson with the single pair of twins, but not long enough that I could go home. I bought a cheese pie (8 lei) from a bakery, then a coffee (2 lei) from a vending machine inside a shop. While my coffee was being poured, an animated advert for cigarettes flickered above me. Let’s Camel! Only 19 lei. I liked all the greens and yellows and the seventies-style font. I also liked that while my parents live in the world of smoking permabans and half-million-dollar home renovations, I live in the world of fuck-it-let’s-Camel. I love the rawness of these little shopping hubs located all over the city. I bought some celeriac, leeks and mandarins from the market, then I was off to my lesson.

I had three more lessons when I got back from the twins. The best one was with the 16-year-old girl. We did role plays set in bars and restaurants. One of them was set in a pub, and had three parts, a barmaid, a customer Tina and her husband Paul. I asked her to play the parts of both Paul and Tina. She did Paul in a deep baritone, then rose about five octaves for Tina. This was hilarious.

Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Poker - Writing a book

A major upset

January 13, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday was a ridiculous day really. For the first time I ever, I made someone cry. I told the 12-year-old boy at the end of our online lesson that he was being a pain in the butt (do you understand that?), and look, I really don’t care about what you’re saying because it’s irrevelant and disruptive, then he burst into tears. His mother then came on the line and she was fine with me, but I might never see him again and if I do, the next few sessions are bound to be frosty. After that I had to dash off to see the ENT specialist. She was very nice and had a look a the results of my CT scan in 2019, then recommended me for an MRI scan (known as RMN in Romanian) which I’ll have on Monday in Giroc, a place that used to be a village to the south of Timișoara but has now been subsumed by it, just like Dumbrăvița to the north. The scan will use a contrasting dye, so I’ll first have to get an allergy test.

Later yesterday evening I had my first maths lesson with the 16-year-old girl who started English lessons with me in November. She’s been getting low maths grades, so wanted help there too. That was a tough session for me because I don’t know to talk about maths in Romanian. I was unsure how to say even simple stuff like “root two” or “a over b” or “x to the y“. I had great trouble articulating the “hundredth triangular number”. Even the alphabet posed a problem, because when spelling a word (say vatră), Romanians say the letters differently to how they pronounce them in an abbreviation (say TVR). The T, V, and R are pronounced differently in each case. So what do they do in maths? Buggered if I knew. I resorted to writing expressions and pointing to them. What does this mean? What does that equal? She showed me her intimidating textbook which was older than her. I only skimmed it, but found no shape or space or anything else to give relief from the unremitting algebra, and certainly nothing handy for everyday life such as compound interest. She showed me a test she’d had to do, all handwritten by the teacher. It all seemed very backward.

I’ve been working on my book. Forget about the 28th February deadline I gave for myself; this project will take a while. The important thing is to work on it daily, or almost, so I don’t lose momentum. I remember when my grandmother wrote her memoirs. In 2001 she began with great gusto, but then her enthusiasm drained away and then she started losing her mental sharpness. In 2008, when she was really losing it mentally – probably as a result of a stroke she’d had – she verbally attacked the publisher when he visited her house. In the end it only just got published at all, although it did, which was certainly something. I feel a bit more optimistic about my first book now – “the handy English hints for Romanians” book – after the elderly English lady showed interest. I asked her if she’d like to collaborate more fully.

There’s another book that seems to have captured Britain’s – and the world’s – imagination this week. My brother somehow managed to get hold of a free PDF version of it. If I read any of it, it will be to look at Harry’s (or whoever’s) writing style and see if I should incorporate or avoid it in my own writing. Apparently it’s staccato. Short sentences. Like this. The content itself doesn’t interest me at all.

Now that it’s 2023, Timișoara is officially the European Capital of Culture. Or one of them – three cities got the honour. My home town, as it now is, was supposed to be the capital in 2021, but Covid put that back two years. In the centre of town on New Year’s Eve there was a celebration of Timișoara’s status, with live bands. I wish I’d gone and seen that instead of what I ended up doing.

Last Saturday I made $96 in my online poker session. A surprising second place in triple draw, followed by a win in single draw. It’s a shame double draw isn’t also a thing. I won’t be playing much for the foreseeable future – I’m getting more than enough screen time as it is.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Music - Other sports - Writing a book

The boon of the book (so far)

January 8, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

The book based on my time with the guy in Auckland has been uppermost in my mind this week. Many hours spent on it. For my mental health it’s been a real boon. Let’s hope I can keep the momentum going.

Fifty years ago my mother was on the ship from New Zealand to England; it left port on 1st January 1973: a six-week voyage (probably not an inaccurate term) via the Panama Canal. She paid $666 for a return ticket – a fraction of the cost of an airfare back then. When the return leg didn’t happen, she was able to recover half of what she’d paid.

My bathroom is done, or just about. I just need to get the bath painted. The work and materials cost about 12,000 lei (a bit over £2000, or around NZ$4000). My parents said you can just about pay that for a set of taps in New Zealand. As for them, they’re about to get the builders in for an altogether more ambitious renovation. They’ll probably need to vacate their house for a period. They’d been stressed because of delays in getting the builders to come. Soon they’ll take delivery of a new electric car. I often wish Mum and Dad could be content with cooking, eating, watching the flowers grow, and playing euchre with their friends, like my mother’s own parents did.

On Thursday my brother had keyhole surgery to repair his knee ligament which had been shot to pieces from overuse in the army. He said he was under general anaesthetic for an hour, and described the experience as like something out of Red Dwarf – that hour was mysteriously deleted. He talked about the artificial intelligence revolution, embracing the concept much more than me. He said, “It’s all fast-evolving mathematics.” Fast-evolving mathematics, you say? (He got an F grade in his GCSE maths.) Are you just making shit up, I asked him. I said that fast-evolving mathematics has been responsible for a lot of misery, like the 2008 crash. To demonstrate I turned my camera around and scrawled a random formula on my whiteboard (making shit up), then added a fudge factor to it. He then said I looked like one of those Open University professors in the eighties, complete with beard. This was, I suppose, what you call banter.

This morning I gave my first maths lesson of 2023. Matei, who started at British School when it opened in 2019, said he now thinks in English, even when he’s alone in his thoughts. For me, a foreign language becoming dominant in my life like that is hard to imagine. He said he uses Romanian at home with his parents and his dog, but that’s about it. His Romanian lessons at school are relegated to minor importance. That verged on sad for me. On the way to our lesson I cycled on the cobblestones of Piața Traian, then had to negotiate a wobbly old yellow tricycle; the man sitting on it reminded me of Omar Sharif, though it must have been watching Doctor Zhivago recently that made me think that. That all lasted seconds and seemed perfectly normal, but before coming to Romania it would have been bizarre.

The darts. What a match the final was between the two Michaels, van Gerwen and Smith. In the second set, van Gerwen left 144 after six darts, but missed double 12 for a nine-darter. Nothing too crazy there, but Smith himself was on 141 after six darts and proceeded to check out on double 12 for a perfect leg. That had never happened before and the commentators couldn’t cope. Van Gerwen, the clear favourite, was just a notch below his best; Smith took advantage. I had a lesson in the morning and I couldn’t watch the end of it. When I went to bed, Smith was 5-3 up. Either there would be a big shock or a big comeback, and it was the former, Smith winning 7-4 after a tense finish.

Song of the last few days: Aimee Mann’s Save Me. It’s a masterpiece. It’s part of the soundtrack to Magnolia, a three-hour film that I saw once but can’t remember anything about except the boy who peed his pants on a quiz show.

The weather. It’s like April, with sunshine and temperatures rising into the teens. The mild conditions mean I can get to my lessons easily, but it does all feel weird. This time six years ago I was waking up to temperatures in the negative teens.

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Winter is upon us once more

December 2, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

… but right now it’s pretty benign. I’ve just been to watch the parade for Romania’s national day. This time it was outside the cathedral, and from where I stood I looked directly up at the windows of my old apartment. In the past the parade took place outside the Timiș council building, and last year we all congregated in Central Park as the tanks, police cars and fire engines went by in the middle distance. They played the national anthem – one of only a handful in a minor key – and then there was a lot of hanging around as mostly inaudible sermon-like speeches were delivered before all the military vehicles and people in uniform drifted by, and two choppers flew overhead.

I’m now on day two of escitalopram after my vanilla citalopram ran out and all shipments had been halted. No side effects yet, touch wood. I got the results of the tests I had on Monday. My cholesterol is high as it’s always been, and some of my liver enzymes seem to be elevated – hopefully when I see my doctor next Tuesday he’ll tell me what that all means. I’ll also ask him to refer me to a specialist. I continue to be pleasantly surprised by my level of medical care in this country. I could see a doctor at the drop of a hat if I needed to, not like in the UK where I’d be waiting days. I’m baffled by how accepting the Brits are of their increasingly shitty reality. Maybe the easy availability of consumer goods makes them lose sight of the big picture.

I had my latest lesson with the four twins yesterday. They live in the west of the city, a half-hour bike ride away, beyond the road that’s being churned up to lay new tram tracks, and almost right next to the 1000-seater rugby stadium. Yes, rugby is played in Romania; the national side will play in next year’s World Cup. Romanians tend to pronounce “rugby” somewhere between ruby and ribby with no hint of a g, and I try to point them in a more native-sounding direction. The lesson went fine, although the younger boy sat out one of the games, saying he was bored. In the lesson with the single twins on Monday, we discussed what things are supposed to bring good luck in certain cultures, such as a horseshoe, a four-leaf clover, or a rabbit’s foot. We then went on to lucky colours and numbers. What numbers are lucky? The boy said, in all seriousness, 69, without seeming to realise what it meant. Where did you get that from?! “Toma from my class said so.” Tell Toma he’s wrong!

Mum and Dad are back home. Dad said he’d been looking forward to getting back, but felt flat the moment he actually did so. It’s funny how that can work. For him, it might have just been all the chores that they were suddenly confronted with. They told me about the woman they sat next to on the plane. She was Indian, in her fifties, and was clearly far out of her comfort zone. She squatted rather than sat, as if being on a chair was alien to her (perhaps it was in the town or village she came from) and spent the whole journey with a blanket over her head, never eating anything or even taking a sip of water. For ten hours. She had the aisle seat and couldn’t get that she had to move out of the way to let my parents sit down. She didn’t know a word of English. And for some reason she was flying to New Zealand. I found my parents’ account of her fascinating; there’s the basis for a whole novel right there.

The Glass Hotel is great. I’m coming to the end of it. She’s done her research, that’s for sure. I like all the references to shipping, They make me think I’m back in Devonport in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis (which is a major theme of the book). Late at night I’d watch the dockers, lit up like fireflies, from the window of my flat. I became a container spotter: P&O Nedlloyd, Maersk, Hamburg Süd, the occasional Matson. Each colossal container ship carried thousands of these huge boxes, many weighing 30-odd tons, and that made me feel pleasantly small.

Books - Family - Language teaching - Life :)

An agonising day

November 30, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’d just about got over my latest kidney stone business when Sunday happened. I woke up at about 5:30 with sinus pain, the sort that eats into the quality of my life without completely wrecking it. I got up just before eight. The pain in my left sinuses was still there, and getting more intense. By nine it had become unbearable. Sheer agony. I didn’t go to bed, because pacing up and down helps relieve the pain at least somewhat. Normally the excruciating pain lasts two hours, but what if it doesn’t this time? What if the torture lasts hours or days on end, what then? It did start to subside at eleven, and I went to bed until half-two. I couldn’t eat anything – it wouldn’t have stayed down. The rest of the day I was on a go-slow, and even two days later I feel devoid of energy. Yesterday I felt a strange calmness come over me, as if nothing in the outside world really mattered. No TV please, and no internet if I can help it. Do my lessons and don’t do much else.

Yesterday I had an early-morning lesson, then went to the doctor’s surgery for blood and urine tests. When I got back I made myself a late breakfast (because I had to fast before the tests), and in the middle of eating it, the phone rang. You haven’t paid. The lady used the posh Romanian word for paid, achitat, instead of the common word, plătit. You’re right. How embarrassing. In the afternoon I had the face-to-face lesson with the single pair of twins, and I passed by the doctor’s on the way. All the tests came to 356 lei (£63; NZ$120), so it wasn’t especially cheap. I’ll post my results next time. I seriously need to consider surgery on my sinuses. My normal doctor, who is generally very good, prescribes me pills or sprays that are of very little benefit. As Mum said, spray and walk away.

I’ve been quickly getting through (and thoroughly enjoying) The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel. It’s the second book of hers I’ve read, the first being Station Eleven which is all about a fictional pandemic and its aftermath (I reread bits of it at the start of the Covid outbreak).

Mum and Dad are now on their way from Singapore to Christchurch. They Skyped me from the airport this lunchtime (my time). All around I could see Airportland. Flashing (and surprisingly fast) buggies, travelators that seemed to stretch miles, and a sign saying Changi Terminal One. Changi consists of four vast terminals. They were too tired to enjoy their stay in Singapore much this time, although they’d had a very good beef dish from a street market, or bar, the night before. On the London-to-Singapore leg, they had to contend with a screaming baby for the entire 13½ hours. When I spoke to them today, they dearly wanted to get home.

Two new students tomorrow – a twelve-year-old boy and his mother, separately. Tomorrow will be St Andrew’s Day, the first of two public holidays. Thursday (1st December) is Romania’s national day. Many Romanians have decided to take Friday off as well, giving them a five-day weekend.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Music

Feeling cabbagey

November 25, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

The walls of my Ceaușescu-era apartment are thick, solid concrete, so sound from other flats rarely travels into mine. Smells often do, however, and there’s a distinct meaty cabbagey whiff right now. Romanian cuisine is often meaty and cabbagey, especially at this time of year.

To get to the nitty-gritty, it’s been a pretty shitty week. I had stomach pain on Monday night, just after I wrote my blog post, and I hardly slept at all. It’s my kidney stones again, isn’t it? Luckily Tuesday is when my usual after-hours doctor is on duty, so I saw him after muddling through four lessons. It was hosing it down and I was sapped of energy but I had to make the trip. I was like a drowned rat when I got there. After waiting for a whole family to be seen to, he did all the usual checks like blood pressure, then I lay down on the table for an abdominal ultrasound. He checked my organs in turn – at one point he examined my liver for Covid-related damage of which there was none – finishing with my kidneys. I now just have one stone – not three like in February – which is in my right kidney. It’s 5 mm wide which is only borderline passable. I also had some tiny stony stuff in my left kidney, which he called “sand”. He seemed surprisingly unfazed by all this, and gave me some pills to relieve the pain caused by the build-up of gas. The pain was nowhere near as severe and persistent as nine months ago, coinciding with the start of the war in Ukraine, and it’s basically gone away now, but I feel whacked. Yesterday I even managed to fall off my bike on the way home from a lesson. I was in a rush, it was wet, my handlebar grip flew off, and I ended up with just a grazed knee and hand. It could have been something far messier. I’m now going to get the cheapest hairspray I can find, which hopefully will glue the grip to the handlebar.

I had a quick chat with Mum and Dad yesterday. They were in the library next to a shelf with Andy McNab books, and had to keep the volume down. They’re always worried about me, what with me being stuck here on my own. Their train from Poole to Cambridge on Monday was at a standstill for two hours, meaning they hit Cambridge in rush hour and a relatively simple journey turned into a stressful messful ordeal. Nothing has been simple about their trip. They fly back home tomorrow night and frankly they can’t wait.

I’ve had a good amount of work this week, though less than it feels like I’ve had. The lesson with the four twins went decently – I now have a handle on the girls’ unusual names; I’m no longer drowning in a sea of A’s and E’s and I’s. One incredible thing keeps happening with teenagers (though sometimes younger children too) and old rock bands. On Monday the single twins both wrote a paragraph about their favourite band: Metallica. Their favourite song, they said, was Nothing Else Matters. It is an amazing song, and according to Wikipedia it was released on my 12th birthday, which is bloody ages ago now. On Tuesday my 16-year-old female student came in a Guns ‘n’ Roses top with pictures of magazine cuttings dated 1988. On Wednesday I had an online lesson (finishing at 10:15 pm – ugh) with a 15-year-old boy who popped up on my screen in an AC/DC T-shirt. The eight-year-old girl in Germany – I’ll see her online later today – said her favourite band was Depeche Mode. It keeps coming. Admittedly I’m dealing with a tiny sample size here, but if it’s even partly replicated elsewhere, it’s nothing short of a phenomenon. And why? I asked Guns ‘n’ Roses Girl why, because I was so intrigued by that point. Modern music is really bad, she said. If she means mainstream modern music, I agree 100%.

Another interesting lesson was with a 32-year-old bloke who likes his football and parties. He’s close to an absolute beginner. We did some food vocab, and I asked him to pick out the foods in the pictures that he’d eaten in the past week. Chicken, burgers, pizza, chips, cakes, and hardly a fruit or vegetable to be seen. Good god man, you’re a human dustbin. I sometimes have a go at Mum on this blog, and immediately feel terrible about it, but she made sure us two boys got a proper healthy diet, which we’ve largely maintained in adulthood. Lack of McDonald’s and the like in our home town (there’s one now) certainly helped.

Language teaching - Life :)

Bullying your way to victory

November 22, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

At 7:50 this morning, my student cancelled her lesson which was due to start ten minutes later. She said her husband had crashed his car, but he was OK, and she had to go and pick him up. What are the chances that she was lying? Five percent? Ten? I often try to put probabilities on these kinds of things, and that’s probably why at least the concept of gambling and odds appeals to me.

I read something yesterday by Nancy Friedman, an expert in brand names. Her piece was about Shein, a mega-successful Chinese online clothes store, and more specifically its name. When I see that name I want to pronounce it “shine”, which actually sounds nice, but no, it’s the butt-ugly “she-in” – the original name was SheInside. And what’s more, it sells men’s stuff too. The name is utter Sheit, in other words. The company’s huge success made Nancy question whether her decades in the naming business even mattered anymore: Shein are winning on the back of sheer marketing gigabucks, an execrable name be damned. Spending and bullying and brute-forcing your way to victory seems the norm these days.

I miss Muzicorama, the music show broadcast on local radio every weekday evening between six and seven. As far as I know it’s still running, and presented by Bogdan Puriș, but I’m always teaching at that time. Most of the music I listen to these days is on YouTube. Right now I’m binging British stuff from about 2006, especially the Kooks, Kaiser Chiefs and Razorlight. It reminds me of my trip to the UK in that year and the time I spent with my grandmother.

Time to get going – I’ve got my lesson with the single twins as opposed to the twin twins. After that I’ve got the eight-year-old girl; I’ve done “Would You Rather?” with her three times in a row and now I’m out of ideas.

Language teaching - Other sports - Poker - Tennis - Writing a book

Fuq the World Qup

November 21, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

One of the benefits of teaching kids is that they sometimes teach you stuff. It was a cliché in the 80s and 90s that teachers would often ask one of their ten-year-old pupils how to operate a VCR. Last week one of my 15-year-old students (who wants to be an airline pilot) told me about an upcoming Istanbul–Timișoara route run by Turkish Airlines, which could be handy in getting me to and from New Zealand. I asked Turkish Airlines for some idea of a date; they told me it was “up their sleeves”. On Friday a 13-year-old boy told me all about the groups and teams and players in the World Cup which is about to start. “You’ll be my go-to man, then,” I told him, “because I won’t be watching any of it.”

Qatar. Even the word looks ridiculous. If a U-less Q was a criterion for hosting the event, they should have held it in Greenland. No end of possibilities there. I’d have been all over the games in Qaqortoq, Uummannaq and Ittoqqortoormiit. They could have kept it in summer; no air-conditioned stadiums required. I’d say they’ve missed a triq. (I remember Chelsea’s Cup Winners’ Cup match in the blizzard of Tromsø in northern Norway, back in 1997. It was a thing of beauty.) Seriously though, this World Cup stinks. Everything about it is jarringly wrong, right down to an anatomical-looking stadium, one of eight soon-to-be white elephants they’ve built in an area not much bigger than Wellington, at a cost of probably thousands of lives.

Earlier today I spoke to my friend’s girlfriend in Birmingham. She gave me some pointers on getting my work translated; the dictionary might be a bridge too far because of the sheer cost. She also put me in touch with a woman in Romania who knows something on the matter. The translation business is much bigger than I ever imagined; there are vast numbers of people online touting their services, even in relatively uncommon languages like Romanian.

After our chat, I played some online poker. Specifically, it was a triple draw tournament. I don’t particularly like triple draw, but I gave it a whirl and ended up finishing fifth for a modest profit of around $9. Once that was over, I read an article about a woman who had developed a tennis gambling addiction during the pandemic. Poor her. Her wagers included betting on the winner of the next point, which is asinine, but if you need the rush… She lost £40,000. I count myself lucky that I don’t have an addictive personality, or at least I don’t think I do. Also, it helps that I’m not well blessed in the ego department. In poker, if I think my opponents are better than me or the stakes make me feel uncomfortable (mainly because my opponents are likely to be better at higher stakes), I simply won’t play.

The incessant rain put paid to tennis today. Yesterday I got out there though, straight after finishing my three lessons. I enjoyed the session more than usual because we just rallied instead of playing a game.

Now I’ll do my usual Sunday night thing of rallying the troops (contacting my newer or less reliable students) before the week’s lessons start.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

Lack of problems can be a problem

November 14, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just got back from dinner in deepest darkest Dumbrăvița with Mark, the teacher at British School. It was the first time I’d met his girlfriend (or fiancée actually) since last Christmas. He’d made chicken curry and banana cake. All very nice. Then he showed me pictures of their various European travels.

Before that I played tennis. We played one set that needs a mention, or else I’ll forget about it. Playing with Adelin, the guy who could barely hold a racket a few weeks ago but has sporting talent in spades, we trailed 2-4 with my serve to come. I gave them a generous call on a wide ball after a long rally to give them 0-30, which then became 0-40, but we reeled off the next five points for the game. We led 5-4 and 6-5 but wound up in a tie-break in which we fell 6-2 down. Adelin hit a stone-dead net-cord to save set point number three, and we won both the next two points on my serve to bring up set point at 7-6. Alas, we lost the last three points, and that was finally that.

My new students. First, the twins. Two sets of them, aged seven and nearly nine. I got them to write some basic information about themselves. Name, age, favourite food, favourite colour, favourite school subject, and so on. Maybe not the best idea because the seven-year-olds struggled a bit to write even in their native language, although I obviously helped them as much as I could. How you’re supposed to deal with thirty of the little blighters who all want your attention at the same time I have no idea. Then it was “head, shoulders, knees and toes” and Simon Says. “Now sit down … but I didn’t say Simon Says!” Every time I do this I think it’s bloody hilarious that I worked in insurance in a previous life. Just how? Then, on the same day, I had my first session with Ana. Another Ana. This one in her mid-thirties. A total change of pace from the harum-scarum stuff with the four kids. We had a nice chat with some general grammar points thrown in. Tomorrow I’ve got my first lesson with a 16-year-old girl.

A word on my tricky lesson with Luca, aged ten, on Tuesday. He arrived in tears. He said he’d had a terrible day in which he’d been bullied for being short. I told him he really wasn’t that short, and that he’s a rather good English speaker for his age (true) who will end up with a better job, and will earn more money, than the idiots at his school. His tears dried up and we had a productive lesson, although I bet he was dreading the next day. (While I was writing that paragraph, someone messaged me to ask what “posh” meant. I said “upper-class or elevated”. I didn’t mention anything about the etymology.)

I don’t have central heating in this place and am relying on the city system to heat the radiators. So far it’s working. Last winter was a nightmare for those on the city system and I was worried my parents might freeze while they were here, even before we hit proper winter, but they were overly toasty if anything.

Mum. Perhaps her biggest problem is her lack of problems. Most of us have had to deal with a disability or some mental or physical health issue or a messy break-up or an addiction or a tragic loss or a financial setback, or most likely a concoction of some of the above. These traumas and negative experiences make one more introspective, to question oneself, to be more self-aware. It’s great, obviously, that Mum has dodged most of the bad stuff and is enjoying a prosperous and healthy retirement. But if she’d had a bit more crap to deal with, she might now have the self-awareness to view situations more objectively.

Family - International travel - Language teaching - Photos - Poker

Hand-wavey

October 14, 2022 plutomanby 0 Comments

My work volumes are back up again. Six lessons scheduled for tomorrow. Last night’s student is at a basic level and I explained to him that you sometimes need to double the final consonant before adding the -ing ending. I normally leave it at “sometimes” unless they ask, because the rule is a little tricky to explain, especially when I have to do it in Romanian like last night. The rule goes like this: If the original word finishes with a single vowel followed by a single consonant, and has final-syllable stress (or only has one syllable), and it doesn’t end in w, x or y, then you double the last consonant before adding -ing, otherwise you don’t. And in British English we make an exception for words ending in a single vowel plus l – we double the l no matter where the word stress goes. My explanation got pretty hand-wavey I must say. (The same double-letter rules, by the way, apply to other suffixes too, most notably -ed but also -er, -y, -age, -able, and probably some others I’ve forgotten.) On Tuesday I had my first lesson with the tennis guy, which was mostly conducted in Romanian. This morning I had my first session with a woman in her thirties and that went pretty well – I could tell that she really wants to learn and would certainly care about where to put double consonants and the like if that subject came up. She’s at about a 5 on my 0-to-10 scale, plenty good enough to get by in English.

Mum and Dad have now landed in the UK. One week till I see them. They called me from their hotel room in the Bugis area of Singapore. (I wonder, how do you pronounce Bugis? Mum goes with /ˈbʊgɪs/ or /ˈbuːgɪs/, but for all I know it might be /ˈbʌgɪs/ or /ˈbuːdʒɪs/ or, who knows, a French-style /byʒi/.) It was a good idea for them to break up their journey with a stopover. (I have very fond memories of our four-day stay in Singapore in 1987. It was fascinating for a little boy.) Their trip was not without incident. Mum’s hand luggage tested positive for explosives (!) in Christchurch, and that meant that their suitcases had to be hauled out of the aircraft hold and tested. Mum’s elder brother had taken them to the airport, and he sometimes keeps fertiliser in the back of his van. Traces of fertiliser (you can make bombs out of that stuff) probably got onto her bag and triggered the alarm. My parents also had a load of convoluted Covid-related form-filling on their arrival in Singapore – just what you need after a ten-hour flight. I hope they’re now in St Ives and in some comfort. It’ll be quite something to see them again after what feels like an eternity.

I’ll be visiting the UK again in what feel like increasingly dark times for the country. Liz Truss’s government is historically unpopular because it’s historically crap, although Johnson wasn’t really any better. There are no maps or plans that make any sense. Winter is coming in more ways than one. People will die of poverty.

I’m finally back to winning ways in poker. I’ve played two tournaments since I my previous post, and I was victorious in one of them – the no-limit single draw. I had a lot of fun during that win, which netted me a $48 profit. At one stage there was someone at the table who didn’t know the rules, and an English guy (a decent player) tried to exploit him by calling with a junky hand, only to see the clueless player turn over a proper hand. The English guy recovered from that to make it all the way to heads-up against me, and all the time there was good-natured chat between us. I took a 2½-to-1 lead into heads up, then my nice opponent came back and took a healthy chip lead, but I was able to turn the tables again and take the win after 3½ hours and 432 hands. My bankroll is $1043.

On yesterday’s bike ride to Sânmihaiu Român